I'm feeling wanky tonight, so...
... allow me to make a rash and potentially controversial statement in the tradition of 
nostalgia_lj:
Kosh I is a bigot who plays race favorites.
(I don't think what I have to say will spoilandrastewhite, but I worry the replies might. Hence, the cut.)
The above statement stems from a question that has been eating away a back corner of my mind for sometime:
Why does Kosh intervene with G'Kar and never with Londo?
I don't buy that the answer is simply that Londo is "too far gone" to be receptive to the message. And a major reason I don't is Emperor Turhan's encounter with Kosh in The Coming of Shadows.
Consider what Emperor Turhan represents. He is the reformer, the man seeking peace, the man trying to turn the tide in his society and do something to atone for the mistakes of his world's history. He risks his health and, as we ultimately see, his very life to reach out a hand to his enemy. If anyone deserves to see a Vorlon sans encounter suit, it is he.
Yet when Kosh visits Turhan on his death bed, he remains shrouded. Why? Why, when beings of practically every other race are given the opportunity to see Kosh later that year, is this Centauri, who represents everything that is noble in sentient life, denied that experience? I realize they were in the Med-Lab, which is a public place, but couldn't Kosh have just cracked open the helmet a little? Or ordered everyone in the room to leave? Or entered Turhan's mind as he did with G'Kar? Or something?
Until someone comes up with a better answer, I can only conclude that Turhan is being punished for the sins of his fathers- that the Vorlons have decided that all Centauri, no matter who they are, are not worthy of their presence...
...even though I can name other Centauri besides Turhan who are in fact worthy.
*mumbleVirmumble*
nostalgia_lj:Kosh I is a bigot who plays race favorites.
(I don't think what I have to say will spoil
andrastewhite, but I worry the replies might. Hence, the cut.)The above statement stems from a question that has been eating away a back corner of my mind for sometime:
Why does Kosh intervene with G'Kar and never with Londo?
I don't buy that the answer is simply that Londo is "too far gone" to be receptive to the message. And a major reason I don't is Emperor Turhan's encounter with Kosh in The Coming of Shadows.
Consider what Emperor Turhan represents. He is the reformer, the man seeking peace, the man trying to turn the tide in his society and do something to atone for the mistakes of his world's history. He risks his health and, as we ultimately see, his very life to reach out a hand to his enemy. If anyone deserves to see a Vorlon sans encounter suit, it is he.
Yet when Kosh visits Turhan on his death bed, he remains shrouded. Why? Why, when beings of practically every other race are given the opportunity to see Kosh later that year, is this Centauri, who represents everything that is noble in sentient life, denied that experience? I realize they were in the Med-Lab, which is a public place, but couldn't Kosh have just cracked open the helmet a little? Or ordered everyone in the room to leave? Or entered Turhan's mind as he did with G'Kar? Or something?
Until someone comes up with a better answer, I can only conclude that Turhan is being punished for the sins of his fathers- that the Vorlons have decided that all Centauri, no matter who they are, are not worthy of their presence...
...even though I can name other Centauri besides Turhan who are in fact worthy.
*mumbleVirmumble*
Perhaps it's the Centauri as a whole?
I'm thinking that's the right reaction.
So yeah, screw the Vorlons and their wanky wankiness! *g*
He does, too *g*
Otoh, he calls both Centauri and Narn a dying people. And on the other other hand, I like the thought of the Centauri not having been interfered with by the Vorlons (since we know the other races see them as their version of angelic beings because they have been genetically conditioned to).
However: the Centauri have telepaths. And telepaths supposedly were "engineered" by the Vorlons as well...
A sudden idea: Maybe the Vorlons made the wrong bet and conditioned the Xon, and not liking to be on the losing side have never forgiven the Centauri for winning the planetary race? *g*
:P
A sudden idea: Maybe the Vorlons made the wrong bet and conditioned the Xon, and not liking to be on the losing side have never forgiven the Centauri for winning the planetary race? *g*
That is the theory that
I always wondered...
Because at one point Cartagia implies that the Shadows are the gods of his people, and given the Centauri's imperialistic history and rather survival-of-the-fittest-based political system, I wonder if the Centauri were conditioned by the Shadows. It wouldn't excuse the Vorlons' attitude to the Centauri, but it would be another interesting explanation for it.